Nazi Leaders
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, was born on April 20th 1889 in a small Austrian town called Braunau, near to the German border. The Great Depression of the early 1930's resulted in the economic and political collapse of the Weimar Republic, Germany's post-World War I experiment in democracy. Adolf Hitler demonstrated his political skill in taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the depression. He developed his Nazi Party into a mass movement and used a combination of his popular support and behind-the-scenes intrigue to propel himself into power. Once he gained office, Hitler moved with ruthless determination to crush his opponents and establish his totalitarian dictatorship. Furthermore, National Socialism showed how a modern "civilized" country could fall to fascism as well as Communism. It created virtual certainty of war in Europe owing to misjudgment of the situation by opponents. Third, it demonstrated that a modern dictatorship is hard to wipe out without war. Owing to his attack on the Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany pushed America and Britain into an alliance with Stalin. Finally, by Antisemitism culminating in Holocaust, National Socialism highlighted its own genocide policies while reinvigorating Zionism.
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the dreaded SS of the Nazi party from 1929 until 1945. Himmler presided over a vast ideological and bureaucratic empire that defined him for many -- both inside and outside the Third Reich -- as the second most powerful man in Germany during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the key and senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe. After Hitler appointed him Reichsführer SS and Chief of German Police on June 17, 1936, Himmler centralized the various criminal police detective forces in Germany into the Reich Criminal Police Office (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt) and united the Gestapo and Criminal Police in the Security Police Main Office (Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei). In September 1939, Himmler fused the Security Police and the SD into the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), the agency that would be tasked with implementing the Holocaust in 1941-1942. Himmler also unified and centralized the uniformed police forces (Ordnungspolizei; Orpo) in Germany. In 1933-1934, Himmler also secured for his SS control over a centralized concentration system. Although various civilian authorities and police agencies had established autonomous concentration camps during 1933 to incarcerate political enemies of the Nazi government, Hitler -- who was impressed with the Dachau concentration camp established by the SS in March 1933 -- authorized Himmler to create a centralized concentration camp system. Though this SS Inspectorate of Concentration Camps reduced the number of concentration camps to four in 1937, the system grew in wartime to include 30-40 main camps and hundreds of subcamps. SS camp authorities would kill around two million prisoners -- Jews, political prisoners, Roma (Gypsies), so-called asocials, recidivist convicts, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others -- in the concentration camp system.
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels was born in 1897 and died in 1945. Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and one of the most important and influential people in Nazi Germany.
Impressed with Goebbels' success in building the party in Berlin, Hitler gives him the additional post of Nazi propaganda director for all of Germany. Goebbels also runs the Nazis' election campaigns from 1930 to 1933. He exploits the suffering caused by the Great Depression to promote the Nazis, launching an intensive media campaign, using generalizations and nationalistic rhetoric to appeal to the community. The campaign promises something for all - work for the unemployed, profits to industry and small businesses, and expansion of the army and restoration of German pride. The party's vast propaganda and publishing empire includes 120 daily or weekly newspapers regularly read by about a million people across Germany. Leftists and Jews are blamed for the country's economic woes. Hitler is portrayed as the savior. Goebbels begins to create the Führer (Leader) myth around Hitler and to organize the ritualistic and highly choreographed party rallies that help convert the masses to Nazism and provide a platform for Hitler's accession to power in January 1933. Collectively responsible for the deaths of over 46 million Europeans as a result of the Second World War.
Impressed with Goebbels' success in building the party in Berlin, Hitler gives him the additional post of Nazi propaganda director for all of Germany. Goebbels also runs the Nazis' election campaigns from 1930 to 1933. He exploits the suffering caused by the Great Depression to promote the Nazis, launching an intensive media campaign, using generalizations and nationalistic rhetoric to appeal to the community. The campaign promises something for all - work for the unemployed, profits to industry and small businesses, and expansion of the army and restoration of German pride. The party's vast propaganda and publishing empire includes 120 daily or weekly newspapers regularly read by about a million people across Germany. Leftists and Jews are blamed for the country's economic woes. Hitler is portrayed as the savior. Goebbels begins to create the Führer (Leader) myth around Hitler and to organize the ritualistic and highly choreographed party rallies that help convert the masses to Nazism and provide a platform for Hitler's accession to power in January 1933. Collectively responsible for the deaths of over 46 million Europeans as a result of the Second World War.
Hermann Goering
Hermann Goering was born in 1893 and died in 1945. Goering was one of the most senior politicians in Nazi Germany and a close confidante of Hitler. Wary of rivals, Goering did not have a harmonious relationship with the likes of Himmler, Hess and Goebbels who he saw as wanting to steal his power. Hermann Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, Plenipotentiary for the Implementation of the Four Year (economic) Plan, and designated successor to Hitler. In 1933, Göring created the secret state police, the Gestapo, that would later by taken over by Himmler and terrorize the continent of Europe. Following Kristallnacht in Nov. 1938, Göring fined the Jews one billion marks for damages which the Nazis themselves had inflicted. He also warned of a "final reckoning with the Jews" if Germany should get involved in war, a sentiment also repeatedly expressed by Hitler. Following the start of the war and early Nazi military successes, Göring ordered SS leader Reinhard Heydrich in July of 1941 to begin preparations for a "general solution of the Jewish question" in conquered territories. This led to the Wannsee Conference in Jan. 1942 in which Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann of the Gestapo attempted to coordinate the extermination of the 11 million Jews of Europe and the Soviet Union. Assuming the Nazis would defeat the Soviets, Göring was involved in post-war plans for the Soviet Union which included massive reduction of Slavic populations through famine deliberately inflicted by the Nazis. This would occur as food supplies were diverted into the Reich and would likely result in the deaths of "many tens of millions of people." Those areas in which the populations had been decimated would then be resettled by ethnic Germans, in accordance with Hitler's policy of increasing Lebensraum, or living space, for Germans at the expense of other nations.
Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann became one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and some regarded Bormann as second only to Hitler in the party as a result of the power he gained during World War Two. Bormann became more and more dominant in the Nazi Party to such an extent that he seemingly controlled domestic legislation and appointments and promotions within the party. With Hitler concentrating his time on the war effort, Bormann was all but left clear to handle domestic policy. An anti-Semite, Bormann also signed the documents that led to Jews in Germany being deported to the death camps set up by the Nazis in Poland. On October 9th, 1942, he signed a decree that stated that "the permanent elimination of the Jews from the territories of Greater Germany can no longer be carried out by emigration but by the use of ruthless force in the special camps of the East." On July 1st, 1943, Bormann signed a decree which gave Adolf Eichmann total power over the 'Jewish Problem'. Bormann also shared Hitler's hatred of Slavs. On August 19th, 1942, he issued a memo that stated "the Slavs are to work for us. In so far as we do not need them, they may die. Slav fertility is not desirable
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Ernst Kaltenbrunner was Nazi Germany's most senior member of the SS to be captured alive at the end of the war. Kaltenbrunner was put on trial at Nuremberg and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity.Under his ruthless prodding, the RSHA organised the hunting down and extermination of several million Jews. During the war he was also responsible for the murder of Allied parachutists and prisoners of war. Kaltenbrunner had a passion for military intelligence and counter –espionage and in February 1944 he succeeded in swallowing up the foreign, and counter-intelligence departments of the Abwehr under Admiral Canaris which was reduced to a branch of his RSHA office. Towards the end of 1944 Kaltenbrunner tried to step into Himmler’s place as the recognised mediator with the International Red Cross and to re-establish contact with the Allies through Allen Dulles, head of the United States Office of Strategic Services in Europe. These efforts came to nothing and at the end of the war, Kaltenbrunner fled to the Tyrol, removing his headquarters to Alt-Aussee. He was picked up by an American patrol and brought before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Information from this page also found on:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_leaders.htm
http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/hitler.html
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007407
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/goebbels.html
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-goering.htm
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/kaltenbrunner.html
http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/hitler.html
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007407
http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/goebbels.html
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-goering.htm
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/kaltenbrunner.html